As the troops
advanced north from Savannah, the destruction of the railroads in South
Carolina and the southern part of North Carolina, further cut off their
resources and left the armies still in Virginia and North Carolina
dependent for supplies upon a very small area of country, already very
much exhausted of food and forage.
In due time the two armies, one from Burkesville Junction and the other
from the neighborhood of Raleigh, North Carolina, arrived and went into
camp near the Capital, as directed. The troops were hardy, being inured
to fatigue, and they appeared in their respective camps as ready and fit
for duty as they had ever been in their lives. I doubt whether an equal
body of men of any nation, take them man for man, officer for officer,
was ever gotten together that would have proved their equal in a great
battle.
The armies of Europe are machines; the men are brave and the officers
capable; but the majority of the soldiers in most of the nations of
Europe are taken from a class of people who are not very intelligent and
who have very little interest in the contest in which they are called
upon to take part. Our armies were composed of men who were able to
read, men who knew what they were fighting for, and could not be induced
to serve as soldiers, except in an emergency when the safety of the
nation was involved, and so necessarily must have been more than equal
to men who fought merely because they were brave and because they were
thoroughly drilled and inured to hardships.
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